Earlier in the NFL season, the NFL Network -- chaired by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones of all people -- deflected criticism of its privatized coverage on select NFL games by blaming the cable companies.

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In a conference call with reporters last week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell relentlessly repeated the NFL mantra. He knows fans may be angry they will miss NFL Networks' eight-game schedule . . . . but he [insisted that] the NFL Network was created simply as a vehicle to bring "more football to fans." Blame the cable carriers for not allowing it, he said.

Cable companies, in turn, blamed the NFL Network.

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Big Cable says the NFL Network is asking it for 70 cents a month for each cable home. That cost would have to be passed on to all subscribers, including non-NFL fans. Big Cable says year-round NFL Network programming other than the eight games is pedestrian, with little value to its customers. . . .

Left unsaid is that Comcast charges its customers, albeit lower rates, for sports channels like Versus and Golf Channel [which are distributed] on the same basic digital tier [the NFL Network wants].

Comcast owns both channels.

Neither Big Cable nor the NFL admitted that privatized greed had superseded public interest in this case.

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[T]he game[s] will not be available in about 74.1 million of the country's 112.8 million homes with televisions.

The corporate arguments revolved around their own interests rather than the publics' interest, and each side left something damaging to their position unsaid.

However, what neither side predicted was the potentially historic game of week 17, scheduled between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, where the Patriots have the chance to set a new record for an undefeated regular season, surpassing the '72 Miami Dolphins previous record of 14-0 by two games.

Suddenly, the United States Congress grew a spine and used a little political pressure to collapse the deep pockets of Big Cable and the NFL:

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For sports fans, in general, the most significant thing that happened yesterday wasn't on the field, court or ice. It happened in an announcement that the Patriots-Giants game on Saturday will be available on network television. . . .

As you probably know, under normal circumstances, the game would have been broadcast only to those who have access to NFL Network. . . .

The NFL has wanted to put this on the shoulders of the cable industry, but when Congress got involved, namely Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., it was the league who was in the cross-hairs. Leahy and Spector co-authored a letter to the league encouraging it to make the game available more broadly. The hammer was that the NFL enjoys an anti-trust exemption that has allowed it to flourish and Congress can always revisit that exemption. [emphasis added]

_________________"If the people allow private banks to control their currency the banks and corporations will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

Why is it Congress can practice oversight on televised football but not on war crimes? Sure seems like a skewed sense of values and morals.

It just goes to show that where there is a will, there is a way. (And when there is no will, there is no way.)

In my view, until the politicians' very lives depend on them having a spine, we will always have problems. The fact that they are able to take a routine vacation while our troops squat and die in the sand, for example, is evidence enough for me that the political system in this country has been crushed by another, more willful center of leadership. (Which is?)

This NFL example will be kept warm on the back burner for future reference in the event of future legislative atrocities. It says a lot about who we are as a nation.

This NFL example will be kept warm on the back burner for future reference in the event of future legislative atrocities. It says a lot about who we are as a nation.

It says we are in a world of hurt. Students of History will note this sounds a lot like the "Bread and Circuses" of the Roman Empire when they were in their long downward spiral to oblivion. Somehow the current powers in charge are just happier when the masses are poor students of History.

_________________“I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat.”-Will Rogers